What can two farmers on opposite sides of the world have in common?

This is the exchange, part of crossing divides on the BBC World Service. Our two farmers have never met,

but they've agreed to find out more about each other

by swapping voice messages on their smartphones.

Hi, my name is Casey Spradley and I'm a wife, a mother and a rancher from the United States of America. My name is Tracy Marobobo.

I am a farmer in South Africa,

Free State Province.

I deal with production for the beef my kit.

My husband and I have a cattle ranch on the same land that my greatparents came to nearly a hundred years ago.

We are the fourth generation to live and raise animals on this piece of land.

And we hope that someday that our kids can come home and also raise animals as well.

In South Africa, I think post-apartheid, there have been a lot of programs implemented by the government to distribute farmland to farmers,

most especially black farmers, because remember the system before could not allow us to own farms.

So in 2004 my father and all my siblings were fortunate enough to get small portion of

land I think it was less than 100 hectares so this is where we've been farming

formerly but we could not get more than 30 to 40 head of

cattle on the farm so we've been in that business since then that That's how I managed to go to school. My dad used to

rare the cattle so that he could be able to provide for the family. Then in 2016 we managed to acquire 548 hectares of land and this was acquired

through the proactive land acquisition program.

So how it works is that the land belongs to the government.

Our state is the one that owns the land.

Then they rented out to us. I am breeding with Bonsmara breed. So this breed was invented

...